The $60 CPU Question: AMD Athlon 200GE or Intel Pentium Gold G5400? A Review
by Ian Cutress on January 14, 2019 8:00 AM ESTGaming: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
The latest instalment of the Tomb Raider franchise does less rising and lurks more in the shadows with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As expected this action-adventure follows Lara Croft which is the main protagonist of the franchise as she muscles through the Mesoamerican and South American regions looking to stop a Mayan apocalyptic she herself unleashed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to the previous Rise of the Tomb Raider and was developed by Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics and was published by Square Enix which hit shelves across multiple platforms in September 2018. This title effectively closes the Lara Croft Origins story and has received critical acclaims upon its release.
The integrated Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark is similar to that of the previous game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which we have used in our previous benchmarking suite. The newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses DirectX 11 and 12, with this particular title being touted as having one of the best implementations of DirectX 12 of any game released so far.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Action | Sep 2018 |
DX12 | 720p Low |
1080p Medium |
1440p High |
4K Highest |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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The comparison between the two CPUs is consistent through to our our medium settings: the G5400 has a comfortable win.
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mczak - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Yes, I'd expect at least the Athlon to be quite close to its TDP with simultaneous CPU+IGP load.The Pentium probably not really (although the Pentium G5500/G5600 could get close, as these have the GT2 (UHD 630) rather than the GT1 (UHD 610) graphics, which also should be much more competitive with the Athlon).
biiiipy - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
In my country the cheapest I can find is 200GE for 50€ andG5400 for 90€... yeah...ET - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Very nice to see a low end comparison, and a quite comprehensive one at that.What I don't understand is why quite a few benchmarks (especially on the IGP tests) are missing some of the CPUs.
Rudde - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The test setup table doesn't include the G5400.shabby - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The g5400 is $183 on amazon...T1beriu - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
You should have measured the power consumption for 100% CPU load + 100% GPU load, lile POV + Furmark?Flunk - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
These are close enough that I would buy whichever I could get cheaper (with a compatible board of course).Targon - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
Of course, if you are looking to start low but then upgrade later, socket AM4 will allow upgrades from the lowest end to top end.edzieba - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
So could the Pentium, right to the 9900k.eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
@Ian: thanks, and I agree with your conclusion, but only if the ~$60 mark is a hard upper limit. Take-home for me: if you believe that you're going to be working and gaming on the iGPU of the chip even for a few months, try as hard as you can to get the extra $40 and buy the Ryzen 2200 G instead, which retails for $99 or so. That is still the value king here, and by a big margin. Unlike either the Pentium or the Athlon, the 4 cores and the (much beefier) iGPU of the 2200G can provide the 25-30 frames/second in many of the games tested here, has generally superior performance on non-gaming applications as well, and, once the dedicated graphics card arrives, it still gives a better showing than either Athlon or Pentium. Plus, as Gavin here and others on their sites have shown, there is significant headroom left for overclocking if that extra 10% or so is a must-have. So, long in short: For a budget system, and if at all possible, get the Ryzen 2200G. It is well worth the 40 bucks more.